README.md

Mirage

Mirage is a programming framework for constructing secure, high-performance
network applications across a variety of cloud computing and mobile platforms.
Code can be developed on a normal OS such as Linux or MacOS X, and then
compiled into a fully-standalone, specialised unikernel that runs under the Xen
hypervisor. Since Xen powers most public cloud computing infrastructure such
as Amazon EC2, this lets your servers run more cheaply, securely and finer
control than with a full software stack.

an x86_64 or armel Linux host to compile Xen kernels, or FreeBSD, OpenBSD or MacOS X
for the userlevel version.

There are three stages to using mirage:

a configuration phase where OPAM package dependencies are
satisfied.

a build phase where the compiler and any support scripts are run.

a run phase where mirage spawns and tracks the progress of the
deployment (e.g. as a UNIX process or a Xen kernel).

Configuration files

mirage currently uses a configuration file to build a Mirage unikernel.
While we're documenting it all, please see the lib_test directory in
this repository for the regression examples. The latest instructions are
also to be found at http://openmirage.org/docs

Configuring Mirage Applications

Provided that one and only one file of name <foo>.conf (where
<foo> can be any string) is present in the current working
directory, the command:

mirage configure

will configure your project. It will generate a Makefile and
main.ml with the appropriate boilerplate for your chosen
platform.

To configure for the unix-direct target (using tap interfaces), do:

mirage configure --unix

To build for the xen target, do:

mirage configure --xen

Once configuration is complete, you can install the OPAM packages required by
this unikernel by:

make depend

Building Mirage Applications

The command:

mirage build

will build your project. Likewise, you can use the --unix or --xen
switches to build for a particular target.

Running Mirage Applications

The command:

mirage run # [--unix or --xen]

will run the unikernel on the selected backend.

Under the unix-direct backend (--unix), mirage sets up a virtual
interface (tap) is passes its fd to the unikernel that will use it to
perform networking operations.

Under the xen backend (--xen), mirage creates a xl configuration
file and uses xl to run the unikernel locally. Xen has to be
installed and running on the machine.

Compiling to Xen and deploying to the cloud

In order to deploy a Mirage unikernel to Amazon EC2, you need to
install the AWS tools on your machine, build a unikernel with the
--xen option and then use the ec2.sh script (in directory
script) in order to register you kernel with AWS. Then you can start
your kernel with the web interface to AWS or any other mean AWS
provides to start EC2 instances.